iShowSpeed livestreams show world an unfiltered China

When Darren Watkins Jr, the 22-year-old US internet celebrity better known to his 37 million YouTube followers and those on other platforms as iShowSpeed, embarked on a marathon livestreaming tour across China, broadcasting for six uninterrupted hours on the first day alone, he vaporized the meticulously constructed "China threat theory" peddled by some in the West.

His lens revealed a nation so starkly divergent from typical Western caricatures that it made many viewers confront the uncomfortable truth that their perception of China had been systematically distorted.

What unfolded before his camera was a wonderland of 21st-century infrastructure. As his bullet train plunged into mountain tunnels, Western viewers gasped to see his livestream continue flawlessly, as China's ubiquitous 5G covers even the most remote transit routes. This technological seamlessness extended to daily commerce: at street vendors, subway turnstiles, and rural bus stops alike, a single QR code scan from his Alipay app completed transactions instantly, constructing a cashless ecosystem.

Even more telling were the moments when the technology faded into the background, allowing human connections to take center stage. In Shanghai's People's Park, retirees taught him traditional fan dances, while strangers in the street pressed cups of milk tea into his hands. All these interactions coalesced into an unscripted tapestry of Chinese social warmth.

The YouTuber's unexpected role as a cultural ambassador stems from his February 2023 viral cover of Chinese singer Da Zhangwei's Sunshine Rainbow White Pony — a song whose absurdist lyrics have become a TikTok meme. When he later joined Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, like many in the US did when TikTok temporarily went offline in the US, his posts drew over 1 million followers in weeks. This hybrid appeal reached its zenith during his Shanghai subway freestyle session, as commuters rapped the song's chorus in regional dialects while grandmothers beat-boxed, a moment of cross-generational harmony that no soft power initiative could engineer.

Following iShowSpeed's livestream going viral, the backlash machinery lurched into action. Some resorted to the old trick by calling him China's "puppet". To rebut such allegations, iShowSpeed's production team released bank statements proving the trip's budget had nothing to do with China. Before that, they had already livestreamed in other developing countries and regions.

With the Chinese embassy in the US citing iShowSpeed's footage in an open invitation for Americans to visit China and see beyond the headlines, comparisons have been made to the ping-pong diplomacy of 1971, in which table tennis served as the medium for breaking the ice formed during the Cold War. As today's world is connected by mobile networks, it is easier for people around the world to get to know each other, and iShowSpeed's success has undoubtedly made a significant contribution to the US people better understanding China. With unpolished vertical videos, self-deprecating humor, and algorithmic serendipity, he has bypassed geopolitical filters.

Significantly, his approach mirrors China's own digital rise, as TikTok conquered global culture by empowering individual creators rather than corporate studios. As the livestream's final frames showed him boarding a flight home, two revelations lingered: first, that the West's China narrative had been built on a foundation of curated ignorance; second, that the architects of this ignorance now face their greatest threat, not government spokespeople, but a generation that trusts smartphone cameras more than cable news.